Following quickly on the heels of Utah's Aug. 5 certiorari petition to the U.S. Supreme Court (see prior posting), certiorari petitions have been filed in two more same-sex marriage cases:
A petition (full text) was filed Aug. 6 in Smith v. Bishop, a case in which the 10th Circuit held that Oklahoma's ban on granting licences for same-sex marriages performed in the state is unconstitutional. (See prior posting.) Reporting on the petition, Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS Blog points out that this is the longest-running federal court challenge to same-sex marriage bans, having been filed in 2004.
On Aug. 8, a petition for certiorari (full text) was filed in Rainey v. Bostic. In the case, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, struck down Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage. (See prior posting.) Reporting on the petition, Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS Blog comments that: "The Virginia case has special symbolic significance, because that is the state that produced the case of Loving v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court in 1967 struck down a state law barring marriage by couples of different races."
